Wood River times. [volume] (Hailey, Idaho) 1882-1915, 1887-05-18

Wuaht tHc aShu,1uy claiInS 10 cFedte As Wnel
| ne nrst began. He is nothing more nor less thai
| drill sergeant As well assert that one mus
| know how to shoe horse as preliminary to rid
| ing as to claim that the drill of the private i
necessary to the making Of an officer; and in tn
duties Of an officer, as l have said, there is n,
science. To march out, find the enemy and figh
him successfully has no rules which can be re
, duced to practice. Gen. Halleck wrote book OF
| the art of war which was about as useful In
campaign as a treatise on infant baptism woult
| have been, and when Haleck was called upon I,
practice what he taught, he initiated, In a feebl
| way, the great Napoleon, who conquered Europ,
| by setting at naught all the wisdom of tn,
| schools, and the famous captain left but one ak
ION as the net purport and result of all his expe
rience, and that is Of no to the average grad
uate, for it says: The art Of wa is calculation
Of chances.
TN warike Europe, save in England, a difreren
system prevails. The war powers have been {
thousand years in perfecting the private Pro
motion from the ranks is kept open under the be
lief that actual service is better school to grad
uate in than any academy. While a government
will undertake to make private the creation oil
the officer is left to the wisdom of God The AL
mightyis no respecter of rank, and genius crop.
| out In the most unexpected places The grea,
| Napoleon claimed for his armies an irresistible
morale, because, he said, every soldier felt that
he carried the baton of a marshal in his KNAPP
| sack. We exhaust our military genius in the sup
posed creation of an officer When that il done
| we point to the proud creature and say: Behold
our armyH We have in ninety nine out of hun
dred cases graduated an incompetent. He is the
natural result of dull plodding nature and o
good memory, and in this our little military inst
tuition does not differ from all other schools and
academies the world over.
| The process might be more of success but for
the fatal defect, lying at the foundation of being
! built on the English system, that has an aristo-
crat for an officer and servant-to use the mild.
| aC farm, fn 4
tocrats the school undertakes to create them. OF
! two boys taken from the same family one NAV
be trained at West Point into a superior being and
the other made his dog.
This feature alone would have been fatal TO
| west Point, in the publicity it obtained during
the late war; but Tor the patronage it affords the
congressman, and we know how dear is official
| patronage to the ordinary Solon What we
| need to popularize West Point is law requiring
graduate to serve one year as corporal one
year as sergeant, and then, seasoned soldier,
he should be subject to q competitive examiua-
ton before being commissioned"
Col. Piatt's sketch of Abraham Lincoln
brings that eminent figure of national history
down from the deific pedestal, where exag-
gerated popular praise has placed him, and
makes him a mortal with ourselves, but
mortal of such splendid intellectual
and moral strength that we admire him
far more than when he was made to appear
as god. Piatt pronounces him the crandest
inquire looming up in our history as u nation.
EDWIN Nj. Stanton, the great war secretary
Is depicted as man whose Imagination was
even the larger and most potent quality of
his mind, and lived in world so tinctuled by
it that his thoughts and acts were mysterious
to the commonplace, matter of fact minds
about him.
Generous, genial and impulsive in youth, in
making his fight with the world the sensi
tive, imaginative man passed to the stern.
vmdictive and often brutal "organizer of
victory" even as the sweetest Wine makes
sourest vinegar.
From the charges of injustice Col. Piatt
ooes not attempt to vindicate the great war
secretary. He believes that Stanton earnestly
desired to do his duty to the government, but
1hao he was, without exception, more subject
TO personal likes and dislikes, and more vim
dictive i'll the qualification of his batreds, than
any man ever called to public station Mr.,
flatt says of this popularity of Stanton:
Nothing but his wonderful ability and rraot
force of character saved him and his cause from
utter wreck in this direction. Not only so lint IL
seemed to me that both Stanton and Seward were
drunk with the lust of power. They fairly 1foted
IN its enjoyment. While Lincoln and Chase were
as pure ard simple in this as children, with no
v.
friends to favor and no enemies to punish, Stan
ton and Seward not only reveled in despotic
authority, but stanton used the fearful mower of
the government to crush those he hated. while he
sought, through the same means, to elevate those
he loved.
In mitigation Of all this, Col. Piatt tells us
that the heart of the war secretary always
beat kindly when reached by suffering, and
was ever open to the common soldier. He
too thnt Stapfn,,'p 49,
of the war.
The chapter on Salmon P. Chase is Of no.
culiar interest, describing as it does some of
the financial history of the war, the birth of
the greenback, and contains some reflections
on capital Of peculiarly Piattian order No
writer OF our day has more decidedly the
quallty we call style" than Col Piatt He
may he extremely rash in his assertions some
times, but he is always interesting The fac
uity OF blending the pathetic with the incisive.
Inc droll with the forcibe, is pre- emineutlv
MS VI Salmon +. Chase as secretary of the
treasury he says: He proved an eminent
secretary on the fact see demonstrated every
day, and that fact is that a man is the most
successful in business which he knows the
least about He regrets that Mr.. Chase was
ever called to other duty than that which he
last adorned, as he had to an eminent degree
the Judicial mind and temperament.
The chapter on William H. Seward is in.
tenSely Interesting 1t contains MANY ansr-
doteS which reveal this distinguished states.
man as well as others in a new light. Mr.
Piatt says:
have no thought Of asserting that William TT
Seward was at all bad man. With no turn for
women and no taste for wine, he neither panbled
nor stole. He affected a wicketiness he did NOT
feel, because such affectation was, in his estima
ton, good form in statesman
In the heart of New York bronze statue Of
heroic size has been erected to the memory of
New Works greatest statesman. It will darkep
into slow decay, as his memory fades into obliy
ion, without, probably, one of the busy millions
knowing that for four years nothing stood he
tween that great commercial center and the utter
ruin of a bombardnent but the subtle intellect
and patriotic heart of that one man. Without a
navy, possessed of no coast defense our cities on
the sea were at the mercy Of the weakest naval
power of Europe
Col Piatts book has excited the critics
They do not approve of much that he has
said and they are particularly indignant over
what he has not said. This proves that it
VIII nave many readers. G. G.
The Smallness of the World.
was one day in London, walking down the
Strand, while q gentleman who was accom-,